For at least a few days most weeks, Mei Kawajiri makes hotel calls to celebrities like Cardi B, Heidi Klum, Ariana Grande and Bad Bunny to whip up viral creations, often shared with her more than 343,000 Instagram followers. Her medium might be even more impressive: extravagant nail art — minutely detailed 3-D pastries, hand-drawn portraits of anime heroines and six-inch acrylics embedded with jewels and bits of lace.
When she’s not collaborating with celebrities, Kawajiri works out of her combined home and office on the Lower East Side, her nail equipment tucked in a corner across from her toddler’s playpen, toys strewn across foam and carpeted mats.
It has been a long journey for Kawajiri who, after a childhood spent in Kyoto, opened her own studio in Harajuku, a stylish neighborhood in Tokyo, at 23. In 2012, she came to New York on the advice of a client’s American friend, who said that her work deserved to be on the covers of magazines.
After arriving in New York alone, speaking no English, she would walk the four-mile stretch from the Lower East Side to the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue with a portfolio of her designs.
“I would ask people, ‘Do you think I should move to New York?’” said Kawajiri, who declined to give her age, but whose short stature, blunt bangs, hot pink Miu Miu hair clips and bunny slippers epitomize the kawaii aesthetic, which emphasizes bright colors and cuteness.
Encouraged by the response (“I quickly learned what ‘awesome’ and ‘amazing’ meant”), she obtained an artist visa at a time when it was tough to convince people that doing nails should be considered art, she said. (Her application was approved; Kawajiri said that the woman who interviewed her loved nails.)
After working for a few months at a SoHo nail salon, she decided to strike out on her own in order to do more creative work. She initially charged $100 for two-hour sessions, working out of a suitcase and doing as many as six house calls per day.
Now, 13 years later, she creates custom nail art for A-list clients for events like the Met Gala and the Academy Awards, and she has worked with some of the biggest brands in fashion, including Balenciaga, Louis Vuitton and Marc Jacobs. (She declined to disclose her rates.)
Her schedule includes a mix of hotel visits to stars, photo shoots for brands, runway shows and appointments with regular New Yorkers, though scoring one of those requires a referral from an existing client.
She finds inspiration in the every day: She created 3-D croissant nails when she first moved to New York City because she struggled to pronounce the word, and it was easier to just point at her nails when ordering at a cafe. (She said she changes up her own nails about every 10 days.)
During a recent interview, she wore a full 10 fingers of 3-D art — a hot dog on one nail, an apple on another because, she said, her daughter, Itsuki, is obsessed with apples and stops crying when she sees her mother’s finger.
“My life is my inspiration for my nails,” said Kawajiri, whose recent creations also include 3-D dirty socks and baby bottles.
She also creates elaborate hand-drawn nails of characters from the anime world, using a brush with a tip as thin as a strand of hair. (Unlike most manicurists, she does not use stickers or stencils.)
When designing for others, her process, whether for 3-D or hand-drawn creations, is a collaborative one. She asks clients for their preferences at the beginning of each appointment (roughly two- to two-and-a-half hours): a particular length, shape, color or sharpness of nail tip, for instance.
After the usual steps one would get in a manicure, she applies a base coat, followed by gel color polish (the Korean-made Gel Monsta brand is a favorite), placing the nails under an LED lamp between each coat to harden and solidify the polish.
Then it’s on to creating the 3-D shapes, which she sculpts with her fingers and various tools from 3-D clay gel, which has a gummy-like texture. She then attaches her creations with gel before placing them under the LED lamp to harden them, a process known as curing.
“Gel takes 3-D to the next level because I can cure at any moment, so I can create more dynamic shapes,” she said.
The job can quickly become rote if, say, five clients in a row want exact replicas of the 3-D “Sesame Street” nails they saw on her Instagram earlier that week. But she doesn’t mind the repetition too much, she said — as long as the final product makes her clients feel confident.
“Nails are such a powerful form of expression,” she said.